I relaxed as the day ended and nothing suspicious happened. I didn’t witness the lights going out the way I had the night before and Quinn didn’t shoot anymore snakes. I forgot all about the gun. Sort of.
“Let’s read this,” Pea said when I crawled into bed beside her. I held the book, remembering her first birthday with me.
“You could read this book with your eyes closed.”
“I know, but it’s my favorite ever book.”
“My favorite book ever,” I corrected. I kissed her wet head and opened the book for the thousandth time.
“Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to find a princess, but she would have to be a real princess,” I began.
“That’s me.”
“It’s always you,” I said kissing her head again. God I loved her.
I think her eyes closed at the exact moment I dramatically said the end. I tucked her in, kissed her little cheek and whispered, “I love you.”
The scent of mixed berries filled my nostrils. I snorted reading the bottle, promising to evoke happy thoughts. Is anyone truly happy? I cynically doubted it. People spend their entire lives struggling to obtain some obscured, vague notion they consider their destination.
My destination had nothing to do with being contented or mollified. Happiness is taken for granted. Happiness is overlooked until it’s gone. Then, and only then, could you truly know what happiness really was. Fathoming the dramatic difference one Christmas can make is impossible. One day I was twelve, opening awesome gifts from my mother, and the next… Well, the next I was holding my mother’s hair with one hand and a silver trashcan with the other.
***
Dr. Thomas spoke to us right after Thanksgiving. I sat on the other side, trying to decipher what was going on, what he was saying, and then I turned to my mother. I will never forget the terrified expression on her face. I shouldn’t have thrown a fit when he asked to see her in his office. I should have been a respectful child and stayed out with rest of the people in the waiting room. I shouldn’t have gone in.
“Hit what hard?” I asked, not understanding. My mom took my hand while I looked from her to Dr. Thomas. Everything was a fog. My mom had breast cancer? She was only barely in her thirties. How could she have breast cancer?
I didn’t know how bad it really was until months later. My mother stood and thanked the doctor before he got into the medical difficulties they were going to fight together. I felt it that Christmas. She was too sick to decorate like we always had, she was too sick to bake our normal list of Christmas cookies, and she was too sick to shop.
Christmas day was the worst. I really thought she was going to die. She lost so much weight in such a short time and her now flat chest made her small frame look skeletal. Holding her hair from falling around her face while she heaved green bile in to the metal can made it even more real. I can’t describe that feeling. The massive handful of brown hair scared the hell out of me. My eyes shifted to the fistful of hair to the bald spot. I relaxed my fingers and flailed them in the air, like it was contagious, like I was going to catch it. Maybe I was.
My mother drifted in and out of consciousness the entire day. My right arm played as my sanctuary for the first time that night. I was stretched out in the recliner, watching the fake logs burn while my mother’s flat chest breathed deep breaths, in and out. In and out. My teeth gnawed the end of the Bic pen while I watched her, praying to anyone that would listen to hear my prayers. I couldn’t lose my mother. She was the only one I had.
I looked to the television, observing the sad, but satisfied look on Forrest Gump’s face. He sat on a log, watching his son disappear on the school bus. He was happy he had little Forrest, but he lost Jenny in the process. Maybe that’s how it was with my mom. I didn’t know it at the time, but without her getting sick, I know I would have never had Pea. That is a fact. Of course at the time I didn’t know that. If someone would have thrown her in my life then and given me a choice. I would have chosen my mom. Now, well… I love her too much to answer that question.
I found myself covered in the same soft blanket in the same position as that Christmas. Picking up the pen, I started the feather. I always started with the feather. It was my Forrest Gump. It was saying goodbye to something I loved for something I loved just as much. My perseverance. The Nyquil didn’t work at all. By the time my mind settled enough to doze into a coma, my arm was covered. Covered with life and streaked with black rain.
The black rain changed as much as the drawings on my right arm. My tears rarely caused the black rain anymore. Time and Pea helped with the pain, but certain things triggered specific moments I lived that brought it out. Like tonight. Had I known Forrest Gump was going to be on television, I would have left it off. He reminded me of the night I was afraid to go to sleep, every single time. And I would watch it, every single time, activating the memory that would take me to my first Christmas as a teenager.
***
I pulled the blanket over my arm when Pea crawled beneath the blanket with me the following morning still asleep in the recliner.
“Why are you all covered up? It’s a million degrees in here,” she questioned.
It took me a second to comprehend what was going on. The air-conditioning hummed while the gas logs burned in front of us. Did I do that? I kicked the covers off both of us and shut off the fire with the remote.
“I must have hit the button in my sleep,” I said, hugging her to my chest. That was a lie. I kept the remote in a vase above the mantle where she couldn’t reach it. Damn. I really didn’t remember getting it, or turning it on. I didn’t remember everything I’d drawn on my arm either. I mean, I remembered it, it was just so vague. Like it happened, but it was a dream.
I rushed Pea along, wanting to be out of there before Quinn showed up to take us on another adventurous excursion. I was still convinced that Quinn had a surreptitious motive for befriending not only me, but Pea as well. He was leaving the very next day and all I had to do was get through the day avoiding him. If he left then I would know my imagination was as wild as Pea’s.
“Quinn is going to take us to a waterfall,” Pea argued, climbing down.
She followed me to the bathroom and I pasted both our toothbrushes.
“We have a map, remember. We’ll go find it ourselves. Let’s pretend we’re lost on the moon and we need to find water,” I suggested, hoping to pull her thoughts from Quinn. We wouldn’t be spending any more time with him.
Pea scrubbed for two seconds and spit,, “No, let’s pretend the waterfall is magic and we have to get the magic water back to the wizard. He needs to make a magic potion so he can break the spell.”
“Keep brushing. What’s the spell?”
“All the land is black and nothing has color. Like your arm,” she explained. I nodded to her brush and she continued,, “We have to get the magic water so the wizard can turn the color back on.”
“Perfect. I love that idea!” I exclaimed, shoving the toothbrush back to her pearly whites.
I hurried myself and Pea, needing to be out of there before Quinn showed up.
Seeing the dust before I saw the front of his black truck, I rushed her out the back door, down the slope to a path and over the ravine. We escaped to the wilderness just in time.
Eight
Pea and I spent the day doing what she loved doing, creating adventures. I swear she will grow up to be a writer, or maybe an actress, she loved pretending.
The waterfall we found was hardly a waterfall at all. A couple boulders and a stream of water flowing over a slope of rocks didn’t really justify a waterfall to me. Pea didn’t care. In her head the waterfall was massive.
“Oh no!”
“What is it?!” I called, stopping behind her and playing along.
“Alligators! We’re going to have to step on their heads.”
“They will eat us,” I said, parsing the way we would die.
“They’re asleep. We just have to be very eas
y.”
“Yeah, Jenna. You should tread lightly.”
“Quinn!” Pea yelled, climbing up the small bank to him. My eyebrows frowned. We’d been gone for at least three hours, taking our time, and enjoying nature. Was he following us the whole time? Tread lightly? What the hell did that mean?
“Maybe we should cross over there. There’s a bridge,” Quinn played along, pointing to a log.
“It’s so far up. What if we fall?”
“I think that’s enough fun for one day, Pea. Let’s head back. We have to get ready for our night, remember?”
“Uh?”
I gave Pea a look, trying to do some sort of extrasensory thing between us. Telepathically speaking, it didn’t work. She looked at me like I was about to be eaten by an alligator. Little did either of us know, we were.
“Come on, we have to save the forest. You want some color in your life, don’t you Jenna?” Gah, I suddenly hated this guy. And what the hell was up with the dark look? I wasn’t intimidated by this guy. Not for one second, and he needed to get out of our lives.
“I think I’ll wait here,” I said, watching Pea take his hand to cross the dangerous waters below.
“Okay, you stand guard for trolls,” Pea agreed.
I sat on a rock and watched Quinn interact with Pea like I did, like he was an everyday part of her life. He wasn’t, and I didn’t want him to be. Of course Pea did. She was in love with the guy for whatever reason. If Quinn was going to climb the highest mountain with her, she would always love him. Pea loved to play make-believe. She had ever since the first day I suggested it; back when I pried her from her unaccompanied shell.
That little piece of the woods in the city started it all. Not even three years old yet and Pea had a wild imagination. She went from being a mute introvert to a motor mouth wild-child overnight. Literally. Pea was talking in full sentences by the time she was three. And not Spanish sentences. I’m sorry to say she lost that rather quickly. I barely passed the class.
I watched Quinn hold her hand while trying to cross the swinging bridge. A thunderstorm had kicked up and they had trolls on the heels of their feet. I smiled at her and chastised myself for being so suspicious. Quinn was a big kid and I was probably uptight over nothing. I distrusted everyone, not just him. I couldn’t help it. I had too much to lose to be stupid again. It was in the best interests of both me and Pea to be skeptical. I thought about the same skepticism I felt about her dad.
***
Things became tense between Blake and I almost immediately. I crossed many, many lines while learning who Pea was. She was special and I was the only one who saw it. It pissed me off that this child was a nobody. And nobody cared. I was there for almost two months before I even knew who Farrah Brighton even was. And then I still didn’t know.
Blake had come home early that evening, like always he ignored not only his child, but me as well. It was nothing for him to walk in on his phone and go straight to his office. That particular day was different. It was the first time Blake almost fired me. My meddling didn’t go over well with him.
“Get her out of those clothes and into a dress. Her mother is on her way to get her for the weekend,” Blake ordered, thumbing an email, a message or some work thing on his phone. I looked up from stirring noodles into my chicken broth.
“What do you mean? I’m making her supper.”
“Her mother will take care of that. She’ll be here in twenty minutes.”
“Does she even know her mom? I’ve been here for weeks and I’ve never met her.”
“That’s none of your business. Why is she so dirty? Go bathe her and get her ready.”
“She’s sitting right there. Do you think she can’t hear? That she can’t understand what you’re saying? Maybe you could talk to her and tell her she’s about to go spend two days with a woman that hasn’t seen her in who knows how long. How long has it been, Blake? You can’t just come home and rip her out of her element for the weekend. What’s wrong with you?”
“She’s a two year old child. She can barely talk. When she’s old enough to make those decisions, I’ll ask her permission, until then get her ready to go.”
My eyes went to Pea, she didn’t understand what was going on and Blake didn’t care. I had spent hours and hours with this child over the last few weeks. I knew her and this was going to scare her. She was too young to understand.
I turned off my boiling pot and picked her up, “Your mommy is going to come and get you for a couple days, okay, Pea?” I explained carrying her up the stairs.
“No, me not want to,” Pea whined. I turned and glared at Blake.
Farrah didn’t even have the humility to pick her up herself. She sent her immigrant maid. We couldn’t even communicate.
“Hace frío. Ella necesita una chaqueta.”
I turned to look at Blake while I held Pea in her ridiculous princess dress, “What did she say?”
“I don’t know. What are you asking me for?”
I reverted to begging for the sake of Pea after that, “You can’t be serious? Please don’t make her go with this lady, she doesn’t know her!”
“She does to, she’s picked her up many times. She works for Farrah.”
“You don’t even know what she just said!”
“Her say it’s cold and me know need a wear a jacket,” Pea said.
“See, see there,” Blake said, looking up from his stupid texting, “She’s smart like me,” he boasted.
“Are you serious? You’re going to take credit for something you just realized? She wasn’t mute at all. She didn’t understand English, Spanish was her first language and nobody knew it. That’s the saddest story I’ve ever heard, Blake. You don’t care about her. You don’t care about her one bit. All you care about is chasing women and the almighty dollar. Care about her for once, Blake. Don’t make her go with this lady.”
There was nothing I could do but take a step back. Pea let go of her hold she had around my neck and let her dad hand her over to the lady. Blake never hugged her, never kissed her, and he never said I love you. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I brushed her hair with my hand and kissed her cheeks.
“I’ll see you in a couple days, okay, Pea?” I promised. She nodded and hugged my neck, “I love you, baby,” I whispered for the first time. My heart was breaking when the strange lady turned and left with her, saying something in Spanish that Pea nodded to.
“You need to learn your place real fast. I’m not about to put up with outbursts like that, not from you. Not for one second.”
“That’s your child! Your own flesh and blood. You don’t even see her.”
“I’m warning you. That’s none of your business. If you don’t like the way I parent my daughter, you’re free to go. Actually, maybe you should go. I’ve been waiting two months for a social security card. I’m tired of waiting.”
“Do you really think I am going to take her and run with her? Although that would probably be the best thing that could happen to her. You’re a pathetic father. Pathetic!” I spewed word vomit, hanging myself with every word. I wouldn’t realize how true those words were until now when they really were true. When I really did run with her.
I gasped when I felt the cold door on my back. My hands were pinned to each side of my head and Blake glared, speaking through gritted teeth. My eyes went to his lips. Why did my eyes go to his lips?
Blake noticed my eye movement and copied me. His eyes moved to my lips. I felt every angry, hot word. What the hell was that? The emotional surge of feelings I wasn’t accustomed to confused me and I felt disoriented. I closed my eyes and swallowed, trying not to feel. That feeling scared the hell out of me. WTF?
“Back off, Makayla. It’s none of your business.”
I panted, feeling my stomach flutter. Blake felt it too. He looked at me, backing away with the same, what the hell, expression. Our eyes stared wide at each other while we both tried to figure out what the hell just came over us. A rush of stat
ic energy so strong we physically felt it, pulled something in both of us. Something strong and powerful.
Blake went to his office and I finished Pea’s favorite butter noodles with mushrooms. I had a small bowl and then cleaned up, wondering what I was supposed to do. My attention went to the intercom, buzzing before the voice.
“Hey, it’s Ryan. Buzz me up,” I heard through the silver box.
I hit the button allowing the elevator doors to open to our floor. I hadn’t met him personally, but I’d heard Blake on the phone with him many times. I knew Ryan was his right hand man; just by the way he talked. Blake ordered him around like he owned the place.
“Hello there, Blake forgot to tell me he hired a hot nanny,” Ryan accused taking my hand. He kissed my knuckles and I blushed, pulling my hand away from his.
“Come on, Ryan,” Blake frowned from his office door with his hands in his dress slacks.
Ryan ignored him, “My name is Ryan Felton, and you are?”
“Mikki, nice to meet you. I’m going to go out for a while. I’ll see you later,” I said, ducking around Ryan. I grabbed my new fall jacket, remembering what the Spanish lady said about the cool day.
“You’ll be back by dark, right?” Blake questioned.
I shot him a dirty look and looked to my imaginary watch on my right wrist.
“Be in by dark, Makayla.”
I shot Blake another dirty look, letting him know that he wasn’t my dad with my eyes. I never did reply to Ryan. My emotions were still in a whirlwind from Blake. I couldn’t think about anymore lips, I mean anything else.
I zipped my jacket in the elevator and touched my lips, thinking about Blake’s, thinking about how close they were to mine. Jesus, get a hold of yourself Mikki.
I didn’t go far. It didn’t take me long after the initial thrill of New York City to wear off to realize it was much like Chicago. People in New York may have been a little holier than the rest of the world, but nonetheless, it was a city. Everything cost twice as much, and it was just as crowded as the city I left behind.